[niobe]

I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did. I don't know when 9-5 started, but it kinds of smacks of the British being that regimented.

By contrast, my observation is that MOST of the world's population still works from about an hour after dawn until early afternoon, or sometimes until dusk, depending on their age, job, station in life and the general level of resources they have versus what they need. And they probably always did.

[frereubu]

Not a historian of work, but my understanding is that one point where 9-5 started was Henry Ford when he realised that longer working days led to a higher turnover of workers in a tight labour market. There's an interesting podcast that touches on it here: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/where-are-we-going%3F-the-...

[vidarh]

The push for the 8 hour working day started many decades before Ford. He was the first major employer to argue it benefited employers too, but many smaller employers had accepted it before that.

May 1st as an international day for Labour demonstrations, for example, started in 1889 after a proposal from what is now the AFL-CIO to resume the fight for the 8 hour day in commemmoration of the Chicago Haymarket massacre.

[frereubu]

Like I say, not a historian, so thanks for the pointer.

[opan]

>I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did.

This is an interesting point. It makes me wonder what unmarried people did, though. I suppose if you stayed with family, your mother would go to the shops. Did young people not used to live on their own as commonly?

[Ekaros]

Either you lived with parents or maybe other relatives. Or in case of agricultural labour the living space and food was part of compensation and thus someone else cooked. Same goes for lot of seasonal work cooking was shared or someone did it for larger group. Then you had boarding houses that included well board meaning food and possibly laundry. Or you simply ate in communal ways with food from vendors.

Actually single person living alone in place solely being their use is rather new development.

[stereolambda]

You'd buy your meals in diners instead of buying food to cook, if you were someone non-wealthy working in a factory or an office. You probably wouldn't be buying that much outside of this: for cigarettes, newspapers etc. there were newstands you could shop at while running to work. For big purchases, I imagine you would get a day off. Buying a fridge would be a major event, for example. But also one I'd expect people to be married for already.

Besides, if we go back far enough, upperish middle class people would hire servants. The original 101 Dalmatians film comes to mind.

[consp]

> you would get a day off

A day off? Are you mad! During the industrial revolution as a factory worker? Only on Sundays, if you are lucky.

[stereolambda]

Okay, maybe partly my fault for using too broad strokes. The fridge example already suggests Midcentury prosperity and civilized employment contracts.

If we're talking deep 1800s, this becomes more complex. As a factory worker, you may not have time and money to buy or own much of anything substantial. But you do have to buy clothes and such. Putting aside extreme examples like isolated company towns, you probably aren't on any long term contract. Why would they give you that, you live in a big city with dozens of factories and tens of thousands of people desperate for work. I'd say this is midway between Uber and how we imagine industrial employment today. If you don't come, they just don't pay you, and if they get mildly annoyed, they can fire you for any reason any time. From what I gather, you would negotiate with the floormaster some very much unpaid time to do a very specific thing, being very careful not to appear "lazy" or disobedient. People did become sick and sometimes returned to work afterwards.

This is based on from I remember from reading contemporary fiction and historiography on the period. But if you think an unmarried worker bought their clothing by some other means, please enlighten us.

[skrebbel]

Good thing the servants didn't need food or fridges.

[stereolambda]

I'll reply in good faith in case anyone else reads and wonders: if you had a working day, you would eat at your employer's. You could also well be the person doing the shopping for them and yourself for the day. For most of the period when the servants were common, people did not or rarely had fridges. There were different contraptions for keeping the food cool.

[wongarsu]

If you weren't that wealthy, you might have part-time servants. If you were wealthy, your servants would eat in their own little dining room in your manor, and shop for food for you and the servants in the same shopping trip

[bluGill]

In many cases the correct term is slave. Servants are different and generally treated better. Although slave also comes with a very large spectrum of treatment (it mostly wasn't as bad as your high school history makes it out - bad yes, but not quite that bad)

[dotancohen]

This is not how any class of people lived during any age of history.

[swiftcoder]

Is it not? The whole idea that young single people should live alone in apartments that have dedicated kitchens, and cook food for themselves would be considered pretty absurd in most prior eras.

[pseudohadamard]

In the countryside if you weren't the oldest who was set to inherit the farm you were sent out to work either as a maid or farmhand on another farm. They provided you with food and lodging. If you were lucky, you somehow worked your way out of there. If you were unlucky, you spent your life as a maid or farmhand.

[sph]

Nuclear families are another modern invention.

[bluGill]

That is not how it worked for most.

The vast majority of the population were farmers of some sort living in tiny villages. The market was open only rarely: perhaps every two weeks, but there is no reason to assume a regular schedule! Market days where what made sense for the village - no market when everyone is harvesting, or when the weather is bad. Everyone knew when that day was and he whole family went to market on together.

Markets were not "craftsmen" with their stalls. There were some traveling traders who worked like that. Often you just knew what you had at home to trade and were just making arrangements.

A set workday/shift is required for several jobs where one person cannot work unless someone else is working too. Assembly lines are an obvious example, which the British seem to have started development on first (though they didn't look anything like Henry Fords assembly line you can see the start of this "The Wealth of the Nations"). Shift work is also required when you all depend on a steam engine - miners can be paid by the ton and thus leave at any time, but as soon as the man running the pump leaves the mine floods and everyone else is forced to stop.

Two cabinet makers in a shop (this implies a large cities to need two cabinet makers in a shop as opposed to journeymen who travel between villages doing work) by contrast only rarely are doing something that needs two people (and often when they do they have an apprentice). They can each leave to go buy something whenever they feel like it. Most jobs would be this style, there is a deadline of when the job needs to be done (sometimes flexible sometimes not), but so long as it is done on time nobody cares when you do it.

[senectus1]

we both work 9-5, and I the main bread winner and male am the one that does the shopping and cooking.

[bluGill]

Cooking was commonly a male activity. Every culture had things a little different, but in nearly every culture there is some point where males are separate from the females for long enough that someone in each group needs to cook. Just hunting for the day means the men need to cook their own lunch. Armies rarely had separate cooks, you generally had some solider at each campfire that would cook.

Mens and Women's work was a thing in most culture, but it was never around cooking. (except possibly there very richest where the men would cook while hunting, but the girls would have servants do it)